Raising minimum wage makes economic sense

February 6, 2014, 2:21PM

02/06/2014

Regarding the Feb. 4 editorial (“True cost of labor”), interesting points were made about fast food industries “privatizing the benefits of their workers and socializing the costs.”

Raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour would benefit us greatly from an economic point of view. ?A recent University of Kansas study found that if you doubled the salaries of McDonald’s employees, from minimum wage workers to their CEO, it would raise the price of a Big Mac by 68 cents, and Dollar Menu items would go up by 17 cents. When you put that extra money in the pockets of low-wage workers, they don’t squirrel it away in offshore tax free havens; they spend it, and they spend it here. Money spent locally benefits local business. More local business, more local hired workers and so on. Raising the minimum wage makes economic sense.